Digitalising a Slotcar-Track using MQTT (and AI)

Introduction

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a bargain: a new Slotcar Set. Remembering the fun I had with my very first Slotcar-Set 30 years ago I decided to give it a go.

Waiting for the delivery, I thought back to anouther toy I had as a kid: matchbox motor city where the cars had small barcodes. Driving over a scanner could lead to "calling the police". This memory created the idea of something similar using a Slotcar Track. While I'm still working on this challenge-driven-part of the project, the slotcar-timing part and digitalising the track is already completed and ready to use.

Spoiler: Working fulltime, I only have a couple of hours per week spare to work on my projects. Using ChatGPT for programming makes it a lot faster for me to achieve shareable milestones. And of course, on the way, I can identify the constraints of using AI.

Systemlayout

TCRT5000 sensors are connected to an ESP32. This ESP32 shares the sensor number and the time between the last detected sensor-event and the current event via MQTT.

A RaspberryPi is running the Slotcar-Timing App in a Docker Container and consumes those MQTT Events.